Over the Hills and Far Away
Page 24
~Nursery Rhyme~
Fit to Rule?
Silly, silly creatures! Who can rule a land of men but a man himself? Has it ever been anything but trouble when a resident of Faerie thought to impose himself upon a Kingdom of Men? But who dared defy a Lion when he came growling and snarling out of the Wood one day, huge as an elephant, golden as a sunrise? For the King had died but the day before and had left no heir and no instruction as to who should succeed him, leaving the nobles to argue amongst themselves over who should be King and the peasants to worry if war would soon be looming in that once peaceful Kingdom. But then the Lion came and proclaimed himself the rightful King over all the Realm. Perhaps there would be no war, but this King was far more dreadful than any had imagined and what did he know about ruling over men? Just as the awful creature was making himself comfortable upon the throne and graciously preparing to accept the cowering nobles pledges of fidelity, another arrived to challenge his claims of sovereignty.
This challenger was perhaps even worse a vision to the overwrought sensibilities of these poor mortals than the Lion, at least a lion they knew for a real creature. What was one to make of a Unicorn? He trod through the streets, his coat shining like the moon and his voice ringing like thunder in the valleys, daring the usurper to assume his place upon the throne. The Lion was on his feet in a trice, roaring like an army on the charge, “the crown is mine, do you hear me you broken down old mule? Who are you to rule these mewling wretches when such as I am among them! Away with you ere I grow violent!”
The Unicorn screamed his fury and said, “come kitten, you have no right to rule these pathetic creatures, leave them to me! Go find your mittens ere your mother withholds your allotment of pie!”
The pair met in the market square in the midst of the town and spent many minutes spewing vitriol back and forth in such a loud fashion that the tiles were shaken from the surrounding buildings. At last a timid, ‘ahem’ sounded in the silence as they exchanged hateful glares as they panted to regain their breath for another round of violent slurs. They both glared at the cowering creature before them, ready to extinguish him as a noble lady might step upon a beetle. Said the quivering man, “pardon me dread sirs, but would it not be wiser to take this altercation outside the town lest you destroy what you plan to rule in the brewing altercation?”
They exchanged a curt nod at the wisdom of this beetling little man and the city itself seemed to exhale in relief as they withdrew from its confines to continue their exchange of maleficent greetings. So for a century or two they exchanged vile words and then finally came to blows. For a decade the Unicorn would stoutly beat the Lion and then for twenty three years the Lion would have the upper hand. So it was that they fought for years beyond count and still neither could quite declare victory, at last exhausted and hurting, they began another round of verbal abuse which lasted half a millennium and then it was another round of fisticuffs with neither being triumphant for more than three decades running. So intense was their battle that soon they found themselves fighting in a deep valley with the dirt so heaped up around them as to form a new range of mountains, separating them completely from the contested little realm. So ever on did they go, back and forth as the ages passed uncounted and so deep did their valley become, that eventually only the sound of their altercation could be heard and men thought it the voice of a mighty water deep in the gorge below and like were they to continue for all the ages yet to come.
And what of the little realm each had thought to rule? The bold young man who dared suggest they take the contest outside was unanimously declared King and so wisely did he rule, he and a hundred generations of his descendants after him, that the Kingdom flourished as no other on the earth before or after, and still the voices of those two rivals still echo in the deep, even though their intended throne has long since passed into legend, for the Kingdom did eventually collapse, as must all such nations under the sun, yet still did they argue over which was the more fit to be King!
And my lonely spirit thrills,
To see the frosty asters
Like a smoke upon the hills.
~Bliss Carman, ‘A Vagabond Song’~